A healthy lifestyle can offset genetics by 60% and add five years to life, says research
According to the first study of its kind, a healthy lifestyle can offset the impact of genetics by more than 60% and add another five years to your life.
It is well known that some people are genetically predisposed to a shorter lifespan. It is also known that lifestyle factors, especially smoking, alcohol consumption, diet and physical activity, can influence lifespan.
However, so far no research has been conducted into the extent to which a healthy lifestyle can counterbalance genetics.
Findings from several long-term studies suggest that a healthy lifestyle can offset the effects of life-shortening genes by 62% and add as much as five years to your life. The results were published in the journal BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine.
“This study elucidates the crucial role of a healthy lifestyle in mitigating the impact of genetic factors on shortening lifespan,” the researchers concluded. “Public health policies to improve healthy lifestyles would serve as a powerful complement to conventional health care and mitigate the influence of genetic factors on human lifespan.”
The study involved 353,742 people from the UK Biobank and found that people with a high genetic risk of a shorter life have a 21% higher risk of premature death compared to people with a low genetic risk, regardless of their lifestyle.
Meanwhile, people with unhealthy lifestyles are 78% more likely to die prematurely, regardless of their genetic risk, researchers from Zhejiang University School of Medicine in China and the University of Edinburgh found.
The study added that having an unhealthy lifestyle and shorter lifespan genes more than doubled the risk of premature death compared to people with more happiness genes and a healthy lifestyle.
However, researchers found that people seemed to have some degree of control over what happened. The genetic risk of a shorter lifespan or premature death can be offset by about 62% through a favorable lifestyle, they found.
They wrote: “Participants at high genetic risk could extend life expectancy by approximately 5.22 years at age 40 with a favorable lifestyle.”
The ‘optimal lifestyle combination’ for a longer life turned out to be ‘never smoking, regular exercise, sufficient sleep duration and a healthy diet’.
The study followed people for an average of 13 years, during which time 24,239 deaths occurred. People were grouped into three genetically determined lifespan categories, including long (20.1%), average (60.1%), and short (19.8%), and three lifestyle score categories, including favorable (23.1%), average (55 .6%) and unfavorable (21.3%). ).
Researchers used polygenic risk scores to look at multiple genetic variants to determine a person’s overall genetic predisposition to a longer or shorter life. Other scores looked at whether people smoked, drank alcohol, exercised, their body shape, healthy diet and sleep.
Matt Lambert, senior health educator at the World Cancer Research Fund, said: “This new research shows that, despite genetic factors, a healthy lifestyle, including eating a balanced, nutritious diet and staying active, can help us live longer. ”